Guilty as charged

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Following on from the theme of perfection, or at least the action of striving for it, let’s talk about guilt. This is more for the parent types out there, but I’m sure it can be applied to others too, it’s just that I can no longer remember not being a mother. It seems like a wild, crazy, hedonistic dream I once had.

Ok, so do you find that you constantly feel guilty and therefore feel the need to justify yourself to others – even to your other half or your best friends – for those moments when you stray from the perfect parenting path? Do you even find yourself justifying yourself TO yourself? (I know. That’s a lot of yourselfs.) For example, today I’m feeling guilty for a nice healthy spectrum of things: the two and a half pieces of toast topped with lashings of nutella that I am gobbling just before bedtime, the fact that I didn’t take the kiddies out this afternoon, the fact that I resorted to letting them watch the television for an hour or more so that I could get on with sorting out a logo for this site (it didn’t come out quite as I’d hoped, so I’ve hurled it back into the design phase in disgust), and the fact that I let them have dummies outside of sleepy time (in fact, the fact that I let them have dummies at all, being that I promised myself that I’d ditch them as soon as they turned two).

So there’s some good solid guilt in that little selection, but there must be a bit more I can squeeze out of myself if I really tried. Well let’s have a think…[2 seconds pass]…Ok that’ll do it. Here is a list of my top ten guilty mummying actions:

1. Not breast feeding for ‘long enough’
2. Letting them watch the television for longer than 10 minutes a day
3. Allowing them to have a dummy
4. Getting a nanny for a couple of days a week to let me have some ‘me’ time even though I don’t have a (proper, paid) job
5. Sometimes giving them quick and easy meals that are just that little bit too salty and/or sugary
6. Buying a non essential cute toy
7. Buying a non essential cute outfit
8. Ditching bath time
9. Despite buying various non essential cute toys, feeling guilty that they don’t have the latest and greatest ‘best’ toy or book that is essential for their development (and which, as it happens, that baby over there has who is talking/walking/tap dancing/snow boarding better than my children)
10. Not being proactive enough in encouraging them to speak and wondering if that is why they are still generally only saying mama, dada, mamadada and now gaga (which instead of augmenting their vocabulary has generally replaced dada)

and one for good luck

11. Feeling like I must have done absolutely everything wrong because for some reason my children are the only ones who are clinging to me in terror and floods of tears in a room filled with otherwise quiet, happy children.

But why should we feel so guilty? Granted, if I was only ever eating nutella on toast, or feeding the kids back to back KFC, putting them in front of the box for nine hours a day with a dummy in their mouths and never ever venturing outside the house (other than to go to KFC of course) then I might have a case for poor parenting, but should I really feel like I have to justify myself for those little moments when I feel like I ‘let myself down?’

Well do you want to know what I think? Fuck it. That’s what I think. It’s as simple as that. Fuck the lot of it. I’m fine, the kids will be fine, they will talk, tap dance and snow board just as well as the next guy and my nutella tastes delicious.. I might just have to put in a few more skips tomorrow morning.

Not seeing your guilt-maker on the list? Do let me know – I do so love to share.

I have a confession: I’m not perfect

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Until recently I had been of the opinion that if a job was worth doing, it was worth doing well. Indeed this phrase rings out in my mind on an almost daily basis. I usually hear it in my Grandma’s voice .. I have a memory of her saying it to me when we were both younger and it was something that her mother had said to her too, a little family ideology if you will. And I find it useful. It helps me to do all the washing up at the same time rather than adopting a (never-ending) one-batch-at-a-time approach. It allows me to wash it all properly with hot, soapy water rather than allowing the last quarter to be washed in the previous three-quarter’s tepid grease. It makes sure that I soak and scrub the laundry rather than just bunging it all in the machine and crossing my fingers that my washing liquid will do the job on the paint, poo and pasta sauce that has come to dominate my (laundry) life. It means that the bees I paint on the kiddlies’ bedroom wall1 are actually quite passable in comparison to my first mediocre attempts that turned out just that little bit shit. Yes, all very helpful. Makes me more productive and at the end of the day I’m glad that I got those things done: there’s little to no smell of rotting food or dirty undercrackers in the house, the plates aren’t greasy and the bees look lovely.

Bee painting addiction

A close to perfect bee

What I hadn’t banked on it doing, however, and what I hadn’t really even noticed until recently, was that it has stopped me from completing a variety of things that have been in the offing for a good decade or more. To start with there are those piles of photographs from a travelling adventure in 1999 that are still waiting to be put in an album because the album is ‘worth doing well’. Now I’m a bit of a photograph album perfectionist, so for me ‘worth doing well’ means that it has to have hand-drawn maps of the locations that the photos were from, excerpts from the diary that I wrote along the way and maybe the odd little sketch of something relating to the pictures at various stages (all beautifully scribed in metallic pen, of course). In summary, it has to be nothing short of a work of art. And it will be in 2078 when I finally get round to doing it on my death bed (I’m hoping for a 102 year innings).

Now photograph albums are one thing, but what if we’re talking about me applying for the job of my dreams? In this situation it is easy for most of us to put off applying for that challenging career catapaulting job by convincing ourselves that we don’t have quite the right qualifications. And sometimes this is true. I’m not going to run for President of the USA just yet, for example, as I haven’t read a newspaper in months, have very little aptitude for diplomacy and, most importantly, still haven’t got round to deleting all those offendingly compromising ‘Uni Days’ photos that some kind soul put on Facebook. (I’m also not American.) But sometimes we don’t apply or don’t apply yet for a perfectly achievable (if challenging) job just because we can find excuses not to; because it’s a little bit scary, or the job is too perfect that unless I’m perfect myself there’s no way I’m going to get it. So in the same way that I have put off doing my perfect photo album I start finding reasons that this perfect job isn’t for me: I only have the 1 year’s experience in a particular skill rather than the 3 they ask for in the job description. I start doubting my abilities.. “I’m just not good enough”, “I’d feel like a fraud”, etc. I’m just not the perfect candidate. Well here’s a thought. What if no-one else is either? The consequence of this situation is not only that I don’t get my dream job but also that the person that does get it is possibly not as well qualified as I am. And all because I was waiting to be perfect. Well maybe it’s time to stop trying to be perfect and settle for good enough instead.

Even Mary Poppins had a day off

Even Mary Poppins had a day off

Ah-ha so now that we’re banding around phrases like ‘good enough’, suddenly the concept of not trying to be perfect becomes a bit more familiar to me. As a mother of a wriggling, jiggling, giggling, squawking, food throwing, howling handful of twins, one of the earliest lessons I learned was that I needed to adopt a ‘good enough’ approach to being their Mum. Fortunately some clever soul thought to tell me this right at the beginning of the twin Mum fun-ride as it is physically and mentally impossible to strive for ‘perfect parenting’ with twin babies. So although I still did try to do some baby signing, baby led weaning, baby massage (when do I bloody get one?), baby swim-swim, baby silver service and cocktail waiting, etc. I did, and do, just about manage to remind myself periodically that just because I’ve had to push them around in an enormous Titanic monstrosity of a pram rather than have them all aesthetically slung around my body; just because I gave them puréed food rather than starting them off on organic beef wellington with a rosemary jus it’s just, just possible that they will still develop into perfectly fine, happy, functioning adults.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not dissing the benefits of all those things I’ve listed and I do still find myself drifting towards the unnecessary where things like handmade play dough is concerned., but I’m also perfectly aware that whatever I do I’m still going to completely screw my children up. That is inevitable. Can you show me an adult human being with absolutely no insecurities or other character flaws? Even Mary Poppins is only practically perfect in every way and she can fly, slide up bannisters and make a flight of stairs out of a puff of smoke (and manage not to punch Dick Van Dyke in the oh so un-cockney mouth for two hours). So my point is, that we shouldn’t and mustn’t allow ourselves to worry constantly about how imperfect we are, whether as parents or otherwise. It is okay not to be perfect. In fact it is advisable not to be. So let’s all say it out loud. I am not perfect. But I am perfectly good enough.

1 I have a small addiction to painting bees on my childrens’ bedroom wall. I am seeing someone about it.

Festive Fat

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It’s 6:30am and I am skipping in my cold, dark garden. I am having another one of my funny I-must-exercise-right-now turns and I am looking for someone to blame. I mutter with each skip, grunt with each hop, and swear at those hops that result in me nearly falling flat on my (slightly pudgier) face as the rope catches on my (c)ankle. I am not very good at this. And become even worse the more I tire. After about 50 (non consecutive) skips I give up. That’ll do. That’ll burn it off. ‘It’ being Christmas.

Bloody f-ing Christmas. Sitting there all smug with your endless starters, mains, puddings and cheese courses. Mmmm cheese…. Damn it, there I go again. Cheese! Just get the hell out of my house will you? Am I going to be forced to eat you all up until you’re finally satisfied with yourself? Or shall I make a pasta sauce and freeze your smug little ass so that I can throw you out in a year when I find you sitting at the back of the freezer drawer looking thoroughly sorry for yourself. Well let’s just see if there are any crackers left. That will be the deciding fact… oh fuck it there are. Well just a little sliver then…

Yes I made it! (I survived my childrens’ birthday party)

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Ok so they say that the most stressful life events are moving house, getting married and having a baby1. Getting married was indeed pretty stressful2, and yes, having a baby (or babies in my case: Just two. At the same time. Like, twins in fact) wasn’t exactly trouble free either3. But I think we really need to give due credit to the stress involved in arranging a children’s birthday party. And particularly doing so while in the process of trying to move house.

It all starts off so simply: About a month before their birthday I say to my hoosboond,4 “I know it’s potentially more stressful but I think it might be better if we hire a little room for the party this year so that we’re not so crowded in our flat. And then I can invite a few of their little friendies along and it’ll be cute and festive and we can sing songs, eat a party tea, bla-di-bla (ha-di-ha), etc”… I find myself getting all smiley and excited at the thought of the little kiddlies all sitting around singing and hopping to ‘sleeping bunnies’, having their party tea, blowing out the candles on the cake, cheering and then sending their little friendies off home with a little party bag containing a piece of cake and maybe one toy because we’re not bloody made of money you know!

Monkey/ape shaped ginger biscuits

Surprisingly, the black tar-like icing tastes delicious.

Then a week or two pass and I find myself deciding that the party is going to have a monkey/ape theme (I have to put ‘/ape’ as I know that there will be at least one smart arse tutting at a rogue gorilla or King Louie5 reference) and start busily searching for both toddler and adult monkey outfits on eBay along with all manner of matching accessories. One thing leads to another and a few days before the party I find myself purchasing monkey shaped cookie cutters to make monkey shaped biscuits for the party bags (I don’t in general agree with the word cookie, but ‘biscuit cutters’ sounds wrong) and then searching around Sainsbury’s for monkey nuts so that I can leave a trail of them from the reception of the building down the very long (3-4 metre) corridor to the room that we have hired. I imagine the kiddlies and their parents spotting the nuts and laughing, looking for the next one while gaily skipping towards the room.

Then before you know it I’ve gone around every local supermarket and found that they don’t bloody stock monkey nuts at this time of year: it being the end of November they’re only stocking ‘festive’ nuts and apparently monkey nuts aren’t considered festive enough. (They may have a point.) So instead of giving up on the monkey nut trail idea like a sane person (or as sane as a person can be who thinks a monkey nut trail is necessary in the first place), I find myself saying ‘That’s ok, I shall simply replace real monkey nuts with cut out pictures of them instead, and while I’m at it I’ll print out a load of monkey colouring-in pictures for them to have on a table in a ‘craft section’ of the room. I find approximately 50 different monkey/ape themed colouring-in pictures (which should just be enough for the 8 attendees), and even use Photoshop on one of them for a couple of hours to remove the copyright watermark. I then find myself thinking, “ooh then maybe I can make little mini colouring-in books to put in their party bags along with their – what now seems like a rather measly – slice of cake and a small bottle of party bubbles”. Fortunately, in an uncharacteristic moment of clarity, I decide that that is going too far.

Coping with fame

Rock star for a day? Joni decides that fame is not for her

Despite getting all sensible on the mini colouring-in books front, on the eve of the party I nevertheless find myself frantically cutting out (unfestive) monkey nuts one minute while making and decorating monkey shaped ginger biscuits the next. Oh and of course I have the brilliant idea that the kiddlies can help me make the biscuits. Which naturally translates immediately into a fabulous game of running joyfully around the flat covering everything in flour, (Hoosboond absolutely loves this and walks around menacingly muttering about house viewings while sweeping and vacuuming as flour flies all over the kitchen and (horror!) lounge carpet as if it is like beetroot juice or something else really stainy…) followed by fights over the dustpan and brush when I try to make tidying-up a game and inevitably ends up with them both collapsing in a tantrum of howls.

By the time the actual party starts I have developed a somewhat noticeable twitch in my cheek and soon find myself shouting at my hoosboond that ‘it would really help if you could get the booze out of the car now???!’. While a nagging thought at the back of my mind tells me that I might have lost touch with the whole point of the party, I still can’t stop myself from blu-tacking all those blessed (but not festive) monkey nuts along the corridor, even though most of the guests have now arrived and are enjoying themselves in the room WITHOUT HAVING FOLLOWED THE MONKEY NUT TRAIL TO GET THERE!!

Pointless monkey nut trail

The ‘I’m losing touch with the point of today’ monkey nut trail that nobody followed

I decide that a sip of fake bubbles will help. But I am unable to keep track of my drink while continuing to attach pictures of monkeys and their nuts everywhere, so my hope for it calming me down doesn’t quite come to fruition. And now little girlie one is crying non-stop. Hoosboond tells me that the best use of my time is to comfort little girlie one rather than decorate an empty corridor with nuts. I don’t even laugh at the ludicrousness of this sentence. Instead I smoothly (ish. I mean, considering that I was pointlessly decorating an empty corridor with nuts) flip into calm, quiet mother mode and together me and little girlie one wander around happily looking at all my wonderful pictures of monkeys and nuts (ah-ha! there was a point to them after all).

Drowned monkey biscuit

Drowned monkey biscuit

She has just calmed down and is quietly murmuring a tentative ‘oo-oo-oo’ when someone rushes out of the party room bearing the news that ‘there has been a disaster with your biscuits!’. I smoothly flip out of calm, quiet mother mode and rush into the kitchen, sending little girlie one into floods again. The biscuits have been left too close to the sink and the box is now full of water with a dozen now double-sized, handmade, hand-decorated, house-destroying monkey biscuits in it, all doing the back stroke.

Survival bubbles

There aren’t many times I pop open the bubbles, but surviving my children’s birthday party is definitely one of them

I realise that it is pointless. Chaos is in charge, not me. So I decide to sit down, snuggle my little girlie and drink my drink. The party happens. I barely remember it. Little girlie one cries fairly constantly throughout and at the end we fill about 18 bags and boxes full of all the uneaten nibbles I had carefully prepared for the adults and head home. Crying girlie is cuddled to sleep. Frantic boy (who did actually enjoy the party and spent the last hour of it filling himself with sugary things he was only supposed to have a small amount of) bounces off the walls and eventually catches one at just the right angle to project him neatly into his bed. It’s time to relax. I swap my monkey paper cup for a real glass one and say to myself “Thank God that’s over. Next year it’s 2 pizzas and a DVD”.

1 A google search tells me that Kalms once asked 2000 people which big life events – moving, having a baby, getting married, changing jobs, etc. – caused the most stress. They obviously deemed it unnecessary to include other somewhat key stressors like chronic illness, death, etc, but maybe they didn’t want to get people down.

2 Largely in our case because I insisted on making it an all singing, all dancing festival, event of the year kind of do, decided to hand make various key elements of it and then ran out of time to actually make them.

3 Three days of pointless agony before someone sliced me up, dragged them out, chucked them in intensive care while muttering words like ‘having trouble breathing’ and then insisted we all stay in hospital for weeks while they tested the bejesus out of the little blighters.

4 Hoosboond = husband. I’m just not that big a fan of the word husband. It sounds too grown up and dull. I’m not entirely sold on hoosboond either, to be honest, but I’ve yet to come up with something better.

5 The cool Orangutan from The Jungle Book who “wants to be like you-oo-oo”

Let’s talk about scrambled egg and salmon

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Joni and Frank‘s lunch story (Joni 1 Frank 0):

Joni likes scrambled eggs.
She will eat them from a spoon or delicately with her hands.
She will also eat toast and flakes of salmon.
For pudding she likes toast dipped in yoghurt, yoghurt by itself and strawberry and apple fruit purée.

Frank does not like scrambled eggs. Frank will spit or claw them out of his mouth if you feed them to him on a spoon or if he feeds himself.
Frank will pretend that he’s eating toast but is really just chewing it til it is soggy and then letting it fall down the sides of his chair.
Frank also does not like flakes of salmon.
He prefers to grind them around his high chair tray with his hand or fling them over the sides.
Frank also does not like his previous favourite chicken and apple.
He likes it neither in pieces nor puréed up like mummy did yesterday and which he gobbled up happily.
Frank likes yoghurt. He likes yoghurt even when it is really puréed chicken and apple covered in yoghurt.
Frank is an idiot.
Frank is up for adoption.

Joni and Frank‘s Dinner story (Joni 2 Frank 0):

Joni is cautious but realises that she still likes flakes of salmon.
She likes to eat them delicately with her hands or sometimes lets mummy feed them to her with her own.
She also likes black olives. She treats them like peas and plops them into her mouth happily.
She also likes pasta in tomato sauce and snatches up the pasta tubes on the tips of her tiny fingers.
She will also happily gobble up puréed chicken and apple left over from lunch time.
For pudding she likes banana chunks and apple and raspberry purée.

Frank is stubborn and still does not like flakes of salmon.
He gives them a cautionary taste and then scrapes them from his tongue.
He likes to scrape his tongue so much that he sometimes makes himself sick all over himself and his tray.
He doesn’t like mummy feeding him and shakes his head from side to side and flails his hands around.
He pretends he likes olives, but really he just puts them in his mouth to suck them then takes them out again.
He likes to play a game of making the bits of olive smaller and smaller until they’re barely there at all, but still he doesn’t swallow them and spits them into his bib.
Frank thought that he liked pasta in sauce, but really he likes to rub the pasta sauce all over his face so he looks like the tango man.
He licks the pieces of pasta then places them carefully back on the tray all the time grinning and giggling.
After 30 minutes of giggling and playing with tiny olive pieces Frank realises that he’s still hungry.
He is indignant that Mummy isn’t feeding him properly!
Frank screams.
Now Frank likes puréed chicken and apple.
But he only likes puréed chicken and apple for eight spoonfuls.
Then Frank no longer likes puréed chicken and apple.
Now Frank likes apple and raspberry purée.
He likes apple and raspberry purée even though it is really puréed chicken and apple covered in apple and raspberry purée.
Frank deserves a good kicking.
Frank will be leaving us tomorrow.

Why

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A long, long time ago in exactly the same galaxy, country, city and indeed London borough as now, there lived a girl. This girl was bored with her job which had become overly stressful and which was, quite frankly, getting her down a bit. She decided it was time to see the world. Again. (Because she is a spoilt brat and had already been around the world once before. But not that spoilt because she did fund it all herself actually. Which reminds her that she still needs to get round to getting the money back for the mis-sold payment protection insurance. But that is another (rather boring) story.)

And so throwing caution and PPI payments to the wind, she gaily pootled her way around various faraway lands, missing most of her flights, spending all of her money and while doing so sent silly messages home to her friends and family. In response, these friends and family told her that she had a bit of a knack for the silly message and urged her to do more writing. Not wanting to rush into things, however, and because she is an expert in putting things off, she thought about it briefly and then went back to her boring office job for another five years.

At this point she was made redundant and again had time on her hands to reflect. She took part in an elaborate career assessment program paid for out of guilt by her redundancy-making company and came to the conclusion that yes, indeed she did want to think about moving on, but was still not exactly sure where she wanted to move to. Again people said to her that she had a knack for the silly message and should branch out beyond the realms of boring IT. Other people said encouragingly that she could become the new Kate Adey, or Julia doo-da hiking person or Rachel doo-da gardening type (pretty much any (female) BBC presenter, in fact), or what about a speciality ‘Dear John’ break-up letter writer (based on a particularly good one penned for a previous disastrous relationship), a speech writer, a teacher, a hat maker, in fact ANYTHING other than your boring IT office job Kate, for God’s sake what are you thinking?!?…

Still not wanting to be too rash, however, and just to make absolutely sure that it really truly wasn’t her thing, she decided to give IT one more chance. So in a terrifyingly ambitious side shuffle from database computer shit to website computer shit she started another boring IT office job and stayed there for a good solid three years. During this time, her extra-curricular activities centred themselves around getting married and having twin children (watch this space and that space for more details on those ludicrous adventures) but then, during her long, drawn-out maternity leave that niggly ‘what-if’ feeling came back to the fore. And so it is that ten years after the first person first told her that she had a bit of a knack for the silly message, she decided to make writing that silly message her main occupation1.

Which brings us to now. We are here. We are doing it. We are mothers who are hovering close to insanity! Well I am. But I’m rather hoping that there are other people out there – mothers or no – who feel the same way too. Otherwise I’m just someone who is openly admitting a bunch of rather deranged and at times embarrassing details about my life that no-one else in the entire world can relate to. Oh well, why not?

1 Sort of. This so far pays f-all, so I have other ventures (a husband, primarily) to keep me flush in Bisto.